1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to capacitors and more particularly to a miniature, low profile film chip capacitor for use as a surface mounted component.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The micro-electronics industry currently uses ceramic or glass monolythic chip capacitors for printed circuit board construction. There are three significant reasons why replacement of these currently used ceramic chip capacitors is desirable. First, ceramic capacitors presently use precious metal paladium-silver alloy electrodes, and silver end terminations. The very high costs of these metals has motivated the capacitor industry to look for alternatives. To date however, industry has had limited success with nickel or lead but generally has been unsuccessful at finding satisfactory substitutes. Secondly, ceramic chip capacitors must be produced by kiln firing at elevated temperature (&gt;2000.degree. F.) which can generate voids and cracks. Finally, production yields are low, typically only 50 to 80%, due to the many processing variables which must be adjusted to compensate for changes in the materials used for production. Electrically equivalent chip capacitors are currently produced using ceramic or glass dielectrics with the above-cited precious metal electrodes and end caps or terminations.
Organic film dielectrics have been used in cylindrical, axial leaded capacitors as shown in FIG. 1. FIG. 2 shows a cross-sectional view of the axial leaded capacitor of FIG. 1 having the cylindrically wrapped dielectric enclosing the concentric, interleaved cylindrical electrodes and further having metal end caps connecting the electrodes to the leads. Such capacitors must be individually wound which is costly. Also, due to their relatively large diameter, i.e., at least 170 mils, these components have a high profile when mounted on circuit boards thus limiting the ability to close pack the boards.